Nomad Cycle

A bit of elbow grease and it will be as good as new

David'sparents bought this Raleigh Sport for him in 1965. Hes been ridi g it since. After 60 years, it was looking rough. We gave it a total restore and a new wheelset with sun alloy rims and schwalbe tires. Ready for another 60 years.

High performance ultra light racing brake lever hoods. $50/ pair. While supply lasts.

For sale: diacomp high performance special racing brake lever hoods. $50/pair. While supply lasts

Mark bought in his 65 raliegh sport for some sprucing up. We noticed the crank turned very stiffly. Upon opening it, we discovered the frame was packed with hundreds of seedlike egg sacks. I guess some sort of bee or wasp thought this would be a good place to nest.

Today's score; a early 1950s Stelber. These were manufactured right here in Elmhurst, Queens. Its a pretty low budget bike but we shall see what we can do with it.

This Hozan bottom bracket cup remover does an amazing job at removing those recalcitrant drive side bottom bracket cups. But the stock plate does not fit the most ornery of all british cups. So we made a new plate with a 5/8" notch for the british cups. We milled then case hardened it. Works great

I needed a chainstay dimpler. I bought this vintage bridge clamp on ebay for cheap and welded on a few bits. I ended up cutting a notch in the clamp to clear the opposite chainstay. Eventually I'll make several wood blocks to fit in the V to accommodate different size chainstay diameters.

It does the trick

On the stand:
This is a Rollfast Deluxe of roughly 1950 vintage. Bob's father bought this for him in the mid 50s. He was 14 and used it for his paper route. It appears original except for the cghainguard. Bob had it "restored" in 1985 and then it sat in an unconditioned basement untouched for the past 25 years.

Bob asked us to restore as a gift to his grandson, to ride it in their hometown's anual 4th of July parade.

We'll post ongoing updates of our progress as we go

Our first step on a bike restoration is to photo- document everything (so we know how it goes back together) then disassemble it, clean it and evaluate the scope of work. We prefer to preserve the original paint and components. However, on every project there is a threshold of condition - how bad can the paint or chrome be to be acceptable to retain. This bike was poorly repaintred in the 85 restoration and the paint is falling off. And most of the chrome is heavily pitted so will more than likely be replated. So, this bike appears to be well over that threshold. A full redo will be in order.

We'll keep you posted

Ross examines the classy cantalever brake post we brazed onto his old Raliegh super course.